


Ghosts that we know

by Ailisea, NatMatryoshka



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Death Trooper Jyn, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Blood, but really mild, mild description of sexual activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 05:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8315206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailisea/pseuds/Ailisea, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NatMatryoshka/pseuds/NatMatryoshka
Summary: Jyn Erso is one of Director's Krennic best guards, a restless Death Trooper.But even the best guards, sometimes, may fall.[Written for Jynnic Fandom Challenge, prompt #116: Death-Trooper Jyn is severely injured and Director Krennic goes to visit her.]





	

**H** e walked through the water dragging his cap behind his back, a weightless cap, so light it didn’t even get wet. 

He kept a fast pace, different from his usual majestic manners, different from everything his troops had learned about him: that man was worried, anyone could tell by the way he rushed through the shallow water. A slight concern showed through his eyes and gestures, even from his tight fists, clenched without him realizing it, while he walked through that pandemonium of screams and smoke that surrounded the battlefield. Who would have thought Director Krennic could experience such a human feeling?

Many of his Death Troopers had fallen on the ground: some of them tried to stand up, others have been helped by some sort of medical droids, but Director’s destination was far ahead. In a corner, hidden by junk and pieces from old destroyed ships, he could see other soldiers in distress. And the reason he walked so fast, the reason behind the shadow on his already marked face, was there. A Trooper without his black helmet, a young girl with messed up brown hair and a blaster wound on her stomach, where the suit had been ripped up by the shot. One of his companions was trying to help her, but his nervous gestures only made it clear he really didn’t know what to do.

Jyn laid in front of him. Her half-closed eyes revealed a pain she didn’t want to show. When the Director entered her sight she lifted her head, looking at him in a hard way to understand; she even tried a faint move to raise her chest but failed instead, collapsing on the ground without a sound. Jyn Erso was a proud girl. And Krennic would have even showed her an indulgent smile, if the situation had allowed it.

A small hand wave, and one of his soldiers bent down to pick her up, holding her carefully, showing a strange, discordant care for that pitch black, menacing armored man. Jyn was almost unconscious, immobile like a rag doll and still wearing her suit, an arm hanging on her hip, motionless. Her skin was as pale as the sand covering the beach, lips stretched in a painful expression, a narrow line. She would have protested, if she hadn’t been so injured and tired, but she just couldn’t resist. Jyn let herself go, defeated, and Orson Krennic guided the small crowd behind him back to the Imperial ship, without a word.

Fire had ceased, yells had faded, swallowed by a heavy atmosphere like the one anticipating a storm. 

It was impossible to understand what the Director had in mind. Maybe none of his troopers would have really wanted to know. 

~

**O** nce they reached the headquarters, a couple of medical droids had quickly transferred Jyn to the rehabilitation unit. The shot didn’t damage her vital organs, but the wound was deep and needed careful treatments: that was the medical report they gave Krennic. The only human doctor he had found, a woman, said that Jyn was out of danger, but she had preferred to sedate her anyway, letting her sleep to shorten the healing time and improve the effects of the medications. She didn’t say much more: only a formal bow, then disappearing, leaving him in front of a window. The perfect place to look at the droids coming and going from the bedside of the woman he considered to be his best guard. A smart girl, with a silver tongue. Lonely, too reckless, unpredictable, a rebel who had infiltrated into Imperial ranks and trapped herself in a dangerous game, bigger than her.

His lover.

Jyn was there, under small tubes and wires in that rehabilitation unity… and he could only stare at her, searching for a life sign on her face. He finally found it – her cheek was trembling? Maybe the blink of an eye? – and let his hopes run higher, if possible. He knew her strength, but he also knew that even the strongest people could fall during rough times. Even he wasn’t exonerated from such risks, after all.

He entered the room in his usual silence, only to hold her hand. Her breath, feeble but regular, matched with the light movement of her chest. Krennic had caressed her skin with hands covered in black leather, and waited.

The room was only filled by the beeping sounds of the machines. 

~

**D** reams began to haunt him that night. 

He saw Jyn: she was beautiful and arrogant like the day he got to know her, a broad smile, typical of a girl more scared of the present stillness than the uncertainty of the future. Then he found himself in a room with Galen and Lyra, talking about projects and weapons, works commissioned by mysterious Imperial officers, with his two friends in doubt. Wold it have been better to just accept those offers? Their faces were darkened in anguish. Lyra twisted her hands and glanced at her husband, but Jyn wasn’t there, maybe she was playing somewhere else, unaware of the Empire and all its matters. Galen was tapping on a map in front of him, looking at pencil sketches, throwing words around. “I can’t change my mind now, they have my word” he whispered to his wife. “Orson did so much for us, we owe him even more than this.” She shook her head, trying to deny the truth with a simple gesture. “They don’t have any right to touch us, we are not even rebels. What do they want?”. “Anything we have. Our works, discoveries, they don’t belong to us… not anymore. Neither our lives do at this point.”

And then they had turned their backs to look at him. Lyra was furious at Krennic, and she could have easily killed him with her stare alone. “How do you dare?” she asked, hissing. “How do you dare taking Jyn away, when you don’t even deserve anything that’s ours?”. She yelled, trying to push him away while Galen held her back not as firmly as he needed to do. “You’ve ruined our lives… and now you want to make hers as miserable as well? You think you can have everything, you think you’re almighty, but you’re just a pawn… your Empire will get rid of you, like they did with us. You will become ruins and ashes, everyone will forget about you.”

Lyra scratched him, shouted insults, while the dream began to fall apart and faded in the half-sleep confusion. But before that moment, Jyn appeared again: this time she was in her armor and turned her back to him like the day she left for her last mission. How did he dare sending her away in such a careless way? How did he dare making her risk her life and then holding her tight, holding her hips tightly and kissing her when no one was watching?

He woke up in sweat, Lyra’s angry voice smashing his temples and making him furious. He finally decided to get up, hoping that his tasks would drive away that sense of oppression, but that night only brought an headache on him. Only in the evening he had a little time to visit Jyn.

He came to her room and held her hand again, looking at her sleepy face, at the wound and its irregular shape, a flower blooming in red out of the bandages. She was beautiful, like a creature born to sleep and be revered, a lethal one. Only Krennic knew how much she could be meticulous in striking her target, and how much ability she proved to have when she joined their ranks, disguising herself. When Jyn approached him he didn’t recognize her: he could never have said that the new Trooper was his friend’s daughter… but there she was, spies reported him her name without the slightest doubt. Jyn Erso became one of them and he was the only one knowing that she was a double agent.

Jyn blinked her eyes for a moment: she was dreaming. He would have wanted to carry her away from those mental illusions whispering in the ear, even if he didn’t want to wake her up. _Hurting you was never my intention. You’re strong… I knew your father, your stubbornness reminds me of him, but I didn’t know who you were. The first time I kissed you, the first time you made love to me, daring me, I didn’t know who you were. Now I would’ve rather pushed you away._ Lyra’s silhouette appeared in his eyesight, she was accusing him. _How do you dare taking Jyn away?_

If he had been braver , maybe he could have answered to his friends. He would have said he was different from the man they knew, that he really loved that girl raised in the dust and in the myth of a distant father. If he was braver enough to tell the truth to other people, he wouldn’t have waited to be alone before kissing his woman, holding her face in his hands and then watching her wear that black helmet. Bravery. He was only a coward, after all.

He kissed her lightly, on her forehead, like a gentle version of an Orson Krennic he didn’t remember. There was something to her that could hold back the cruel Imperial officer, making him incapable of using his slyness to play with a girl as smart as he was. Something he could not have explained, yet she made him discover those aspects about himself he didn’t find out on his own.

“Sleep well, Jyn. I’ll watch your back.”

He went to sleep, hoping Lyra wouldn’t have come back to haunt him. For once, that wish had been granted. 

~

**B** efore getting better, her conditions had worsened for a while. One day he saw the nurse running to her, three medical droids darting on their wheels like a crowd of enemies was chasing them, and he followed them along the hallway, staying aside. The woman was moving frantically around Jyn, calibrating some machines, then put a plastic mask on her face and waited with a look on her face that was the same of someone who didn’t want to hope too much in some kind of miracle. The droids kept beeping, measuring, and after a minute or so they came out with the woman. No one seemed to notice him.

Jyn had waited for him on the bed, awake, the small mask firmly placed on the face, eyes wide open. She looked at him and he gave her another look as an answer, aware of being a strange vision, a visitor out of place in that cocoon-like environment. The girl lifted a bandaged hand to move the wire away from her mouth and, before Orson could stop her, she murmured his name, maybe to make sure of his presence there. She seemed so little, so helpless in that hospital bed, only a gown to cover her body and a plaster on her cheek.

“You came to visit me… finally, when I’m awake.”

It was just a statement, not a scolding, but if she was in her full strength, the same voice would have been full of sarcasm. Orson sat next to her and looked at Jyn’s petite figure. 

“How could I leave my best guard on her own?”

She let go a giggle that sounded more like a rasping breath. Orson slid in her direction to adjust the wire on her lips, but she pushed him away with a faint gesture. She didn’t want him to see her weakness, her eyes said so: if she could, she would have stripped away all those machine wires from. She was so proud, Jyn, proud and fierce like a queen, even in her darkest moments. And he had fallen in love with her. 

“Orson…” – she had never called him by his name before - “I’m getting worse. You know it, right?”

He waved a hand, trying to shush her gently, but he only seemed more nervous. “Maybe you’re just tired. The doctor said nothing too worrying about your conditions… you need to rest. And you have to take your pills.”

She wasn’t a girl anymore. He couldn’t fool her like she had been six years old. Jyn understood everything, but let him put the mask on her face without a word anyway, then she grabbed one of his hands to hold it. She never touched him that way, neither when they were alone, in intimacy: Orson had startled a bit before holding back her warm fingers in his. Long, soft fingers, a chipped nail, the index one. A different hold, more desperate. She was so light, like a piece of paper. He put that hand on his lips and kissed it softly, afraid of leaving a mark on her, even an invisible one. 

“Don’t leave me alone” she was… _begging_ him? “Stay with me, Orson. I’m scared.”

He couldn’t hold her against his chest, put the wires aside and cradle her until sleep, but the way he held her hand spoke for him. He kissed her again, on the lips this time, a small contact to reassure her with a little bit of clumsiness. He was used to give detached orders, to grab her firmly during sex: that tenderness was not easy for him to handle. 

“I’ll be just out of the room, waiting for the doctor. Now rest, Jyn. You have to recover.”

The sound of footsteps in the hallway revealed the doctor’s presence, or maybe it was a nurse, going there to control Jyn: he had to go anyway. Krennic stood up slowly, leaving Jyn’s hand to place it on her belly, throwing a glance at her: _you’re capable, a bruise can’t bring you to your knees_ , maybe that was what he wanted to say. Jyn closed her eyes again and quickly fell asleep, like a little girl exhausted after an entire day of amusement. Director Krennic stepped aside from the door, closing it with his usual cold, controlled behavior. A single tear fell from his eye, insolently. He immediately wiped it out, without a word.

Lyra Erso came back to him that night, and she didn’t say anything. She only looked at him: her silent stare was worse than any insult. 

~

But Jyn had recovered in a couple of weeks. 

The doctor visited her and decided the life-support system and all those machines weren’t necessary anymore: Jyn’s skin tone was healthy again and she had begun to eat on her own without problems. Orson found her on her bed, legs crossed, only a bandage showing through her gown, as memento of her period spent in the intensive care room. The moment he had entered the room, she greeted him with a small smile, and he understood she was the Jyn he had always known.

He insisted she should have more rest – he didn’t want her to get hurt again – but Jyn was uncompromising. The medicines made her quickly stand on her feet: she came at his office door, helmet under an arm and her usual slight arrogance, a capable girl who can look after herself anytime… he couldn’t do anything but welcoming her among his Death Troopers once more. 

There were things Orson Krennic couldn’t admit to anybody, little sins kept as gifts, in the deepest part of his heart. When marching with his soldiers he always make himself sure Jyn was with him, right by his side. When no one was watching, he turned his head to smile at her, like a sort of reassurance. And during the nights, when fires and explosions were gone and planets were silent and motionless too, he held her tight in his bed, afraid that something, or someone, could take her away from him. His arms around her body, her head on his chest, one of his hands lightly caressing her scar, while Jyn’s lips murmured incomplete, sleepy words.

Standing next to his bed, Galen Erso watched him without saying a word, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story in two days, in a terrible hurry: like many other times before, I let my imagination flow around an idea, a prompt this time: “ _116\. Deathtrooper-Jyn is severely injured and Krennic goes to visit her. He talks to her while she sleeps, maybe holds her hand. A little sad at first but fluff at the end._ ” I really liked to imagine a “new” Krennic, different from the Director shown in the movie trailers, a man who could be afraid of losing something, maybe even in love. _Definitely_ in love. And, beside him, a Jyn who’s strong yet in need of attentions, especially in her darkest moments.
> 
> English is not my mother tongue: I usually write in Italian and then I translate all I’ve written. This time I personally did the translation and, even if it’s not perfect like the other one by my sweet bae _**Ailisea**_ for my other Jynnic fanfic, I hope you can appreciate it anyway. She read and corrected all the wrong parts, with her usual patience. It’s not so easy to make every Italian expression sound correct when translated to English… but a translator does their best anyway, after all. And English is our favourite language to work with.
> 
> Thanks to all the _**Jynnic fam**_ for this great challenge! You're amazing and talented, I loved every work you created... and I really enjoyed myself in this initiative too. And thanks to the person who submitted this prompt, I hope my little work can match your expectations. Death-Trooper Jyn’s original idea for “my” Jyn is slightly inspired by _**ennaih**_ 's works, and I think I can never thank her enough for all the beautiful stories she shares with us.
> 
> Last but not least, thanks to my wonderful bae, **_Ailisea_**. She supports me every time and helps my stories to grow up and become what you read. Her patience is not human, so are her strength and kindness. Thanks for all that and more, sweety, for your help in this adventure!  
>  We're on Tumblr, if you like to share some Jynnic love with us: lion-hearted-wolf.tumblr.com (me) and the-witch-of-the-web.tumblr.com (bae). 
> 
> And… kudos to you too, dear reader!


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